The Inner Child and Love

This morning I sat to listen to my little girls inside, as I do every morning. I felt an enormous, safe love well up inside me—or was it from beyond me? This brim-full sense of love first came to me in therapy, when (after many struggles) I learned to trust my therapist’s love and came to rest in it. Even then, it felt bigger than just two people. It felt like a sacred love that was coming through the agency of this slight, human woman and was being poured into me.

But the other part of it was the trust that I brought to the relationship with my therapist. The little girl inside of me desired with all her heart to open up, be seen, and express love. This was the way I was born, I am sure, full of the desire to love and be loved. Early on, I’d been both stifled and abused, so that the loving-hearted inner child had to flee to a remote place in me. Now she could come home and join me in this new-old loving place.

This morning also, before I sat with my inner children, I read a piece on lovingkindness meditation, what the Buddhists call metta and what the Christians know as God’s love. It’s all one. I knew that clearly as I sat with the little girls. They are part of my path to a sacred loving awareness of the world.

Inner Child of Love and Light

Once upon a time, I was delving deep in therapy and retrieving the lost children inside of me—-the terrified and abandoned—-with the help of a marvelous therapist. Somewhere in all of these thorns and mud, I experienced the lightening-bug, butterfly presence of a little girl of light and love.

It didn’t happen by logic but by magic and hard work. There she was, the amazing presence of my original child-soul of innocence and love. I saw the world through her eyes for a time—-the people, the trees, the sky all wondrous and glowing.

I can’t always find my way back to that soul-place but it’s a vision, a glimpse of how to be in the world with trust and love.

Inner Child's Turn to Play

I've been turning to art recently to express myself. During the long hard process of healing from abuse, the art was squeezed out of me. It was often dark or angry-red zig-zags. These were very important to me to give form and validation to my feelings. Then it became child-scapes, pastels of my little girl in wondrous worlds, visions of the life I could have.

Now, having completed my memoir of healing (which is still looking for an agent), I feel new openings. To make my abstract art I need to experiment and play, without critical voices to stop me. I need to listen to color and form and above all, trust my intuition. Of course there are amazing days and discouraging days. But my inner child and I have a lot of fun with it, and the path of art is a model for the path of my life unfolding.

Holiday Craziness

Many of us get anxious at holidays. It’s hard for the holidays ever to live up to our expectations. And of course we carry with us all the old hurts and patterns.

Kids absorb the family’s craziness that comes out with special intensity at holidays. My father was snarly and temperamental at Christmas and we would tiptoe around his anger. Fifty years later, my mother told me some background. Father always put off buying presents until the last minute, a typical pattern of his. Then he never could find all the things he wanted to buy to make us happy. Because of that, he was angry at himself, so he grumped around the house and made everyone miserable!

As a kid, all I knew was the thickness of the tension. I tried to made it all right by being extra good. That’s still the temptation at Christmas, to try to make everyone happy.

This year I’m giving my poems as presents, along with donations to local charities. I’m trying to relax into the realities of life, family, and friends—loving and imperfect.

Miss America By Day, a memoir of sexual abuse and healing

Miss America By Day is a gutsy, revealing memoir by Marilyn van Derbur, the former Miss America. She begins with a description of a family that, from the outside, looked incredibly privileged and wonderful, but from the inside was hell. Marilyn divided herself into the day child and the night child, in order to survive. The day child wished desperately to please Daddy, while the night child was Daddy's sexual victim. Her mother refused to hear her cries for help.

We follow her through high school, college, marriage. The book's compendious view of the author's life is both a strength and a weakness. While giving us a sweeping view, it also means we don't stay in once place for long.

With incredible bravery, van Derber shows how very dysfunctional she was made by the aftermath of the abuse, at the same time that she managed to have a very public, very successful career. She was fortunate to marry a terrifically supportive man, and some of the scenes in which he responds to her odd behaviors with understanding and love moved me to tears. She goes on to show the ways in which she healed and how much hard work was involved. Finally she rounds out this hefty book with sections on how to prevent child abuse and how to talk with children.

It's an intense, gripping read and an important service van Derbur has done.